Tutorial:Age of Mind Cheat Codes
Welcome, cheaters! This tutorial is here to teach you how to create your own cheat codes for Age of Mind. It will start off with the basics, and expand further. Please note that you may need to read some sections a couple of times before you understand it all! = Hexadecimal Notation = Age of Mind cheat codes are two numbers put together. Those numbers do not use the 'human' decimal notation (digits 0-9). Instead, they use a computer-optimised, hexadecimal notation. Hexadec means 16. The first 10 digits are the normal decimal ones (0-9) but there are also "digits" 10-15, noted as A-F, as in, A is 10, B is 11, C is 12, etc. You may need to convert between these two number systems as you go along, so I'll teach you how to do it on MS Calculator, and on a normal calculator (with a bit of thinking yourself, though!) MS Calculator Open up your MS Calculator. In the 'view' menu, select programmer. The calculator will now get more functions. On the left, you will see the options: Hex, Dec, Oct and Bin. You are interested in Hex and Dec only. Hex is hexadecimal, and Dec is decimal. It should be set on Dec now, so type a human number, for example, 57005. Now click on Hex. The number should turn into DEAD. And this is the hexadecimal version of this number! (no, it's not an accident, i put this number there on purpose :)). By clicking 'Dec' you can turn it back to decimal. A normal calculator (or a piece of paper) You may want to write the following table down for reference: Hexadecimal Decimal A 10 B 11 C 12 D 13 E 14 F 15 OK, let's start by converting a hexadecimal number into a decimal number. Let's take DEAD as the example. What you do is you start with n=0. You then take the first hexadecimal digit and look it up on the table above, and assuming the digit is x, you do n*16+x. Then you go on the next digit and you do the same. Example: n=0 DEAD n=0*16+13=13 D=13 EAD n=13*16+14=222 E=14 AD n=222*16+10=3562 A=10 D n=3562*16+13=57005 D=13 Finished! As you can see, the result is 57005, which is correct! Decimal to Hexadecimal Converting from decimal to hexadecimal is not much harder than hex to dec. It's pretty much the inverse. You may actually need a scientific calculator for this, preferably one with a mod (modulus) button (it calculates remainders from division). A quick tutorial on how to use the mod button: imagine something like 10/6 = 1 rem. 4. So 10/6=1, while 10 MOD 6 = 4 (the remainder). MOD is noted as %, I mean: 10%6=4. Once you understand that, we can carry on and learn how to convert from decimal to hexadecimal! This time we do an inverse, so n=57005. Then what we do is divide the number by 16, and the remainder is the rightmost hexadecimal digit. Repeat until n=0, adding the remainder to the front of the hexadecimal number each time. For example: n=57005 n/16=3562 n%16=13 D 3562/16=222 n%16=10 AD 222/16=13 n%16=14 EAD 13/16=0! n%16=13 DEAD Pretty simple. = Computer Memory Addressing = We're almost ready to start making cheat codes, but you still need a brief explanation of how computers (or rather, computer software) sees memory. A data structure is a bunch of data put together in one way or the other. The simpliest one (which Age of Mind save files, as well as any other raw file uses) is a block. The data inside it is addressed (reffered to) as base+offset. The base is the location, in memory, where the block begins. The offset is the distance from the start of the block to the desired piece of data, in bytes. In Age of Mind cheat codes, you need to type the offset but not the base (the base is always at the start of the save file). Also note that Age of Mind save file blocks are aligned on a 4-byte boundary, which means offsets are always multiples of 4, and each piece of data is 4 bytes long no matter what. = Byte Order = I'll say it just quick! Each byte is represented by 2 hexadecimal digits, which can be 00 or 0x (they are allowed a zero, but there must be 2). Since everything in Age of Mind save files is 4 bytes long, every so-called value (you'll find out more in a minute) is 8 hexadecimal digits long. If your number is smaller than that, you need to put zeros at the front. If your number is too long, tough luck. = Let's get onto the actual cheat codes! = Finally! Age of Mind save files are 256-byte blocks, so you only need 1 byte for the offset (FF=255), and 4 bytes for the value (the thing you want to put at that offset), so cheat codes are 10-digit hexadecimals, where the first 2 digits are the offset, and the other 8 are the value, so 1CFFFFFFFF means 'put FFFFFFFF at offset 1C'. Here are some offsets: Offset Meaning 00 The word "MADD", specially coded. Put a random thing here to erase your entire save file. 04 The room number, which describes the level you're in, in a very complicated way. You might want to experiment though! 08 Your score goes here. 1C Your sprite. 15 is a saphiri, 99 is facebook icon, and a few more funny ones (note: i mean in decimal, convert it yourself) 20 Sprite limit, keep it at sprite+1, it should be at least 15/16. 24 Your status. I wouldn't mess with it if I were you. It's not gonna work anyway. 28 Amount of freezeray shots you have. 2C Amount of lives you have. Please note that making it FFFFFFFF makes you invincible. 30 Gems you have. Keep at FFFFFFFF or leave it alone. Trust me.